Voicemail is generally regarded as an application or service whereby a first telecommunications service subscriber (the calling party) initiates a call to a second telecommunications service subscriber (the called party) and the incoming call to the called party is diverted to a messaging service where information intended for the called party may be provided by the calling party and stored (e.g. in the form of a voicemail message) by the provider of the messaging service for the called party to access at a later date or time. The voicemail message is stored by the called party's voicemail system and is accessible to the called party on request.
The invention addresses shortcomings in conventional voicemail systems by way of a shared voicemail system comprising a computer processor configured in use to store a voice message received from a third party; in which the stored voice message is accessible to each user of a plurality of users of the shared voicemail system. The processor is further configured in use to provide a copy of the stored message to a first user of the plurality of users; receive an indication from the first user that the message is intended to be accessed by a second user of the plurality of users; and provide a notification prompting the second user to access the message.
Hence a notification is provided to alert the target destination of the voice message, although the message has already been accessed by another user. A typical voicemail system will mark the message as “read”, once it has been accessed by a user.
A method of operating a shared voicemail system; the method comprising: storing a voice message received from a third party, in which the stored voice message is accessible to each user of a plurality of users of the shared voicemail system. The method further comprises providing a copy of the message to a first user of the plurality of users; receiving an indication from the first user indicating that the message is intended to be accessed by a second user of the plurality of users; and providing a notification prompting the second user to access the message.
In an embodiment, the voice message received from the third party is part of a call redirected to the shared voicemail system from a phone line shared by the plurality of users.